While the first season of Vice Principals was inspired by the films of John Hughes, season 2 of the HBO comedy is influenced by Brian de Palma. Jody Hill and Danny McBride‘s series is about to take a more sinister turn, as Mr. Gamby (McBride) takes matters into his own hands and looks for the person who shot him last season. One suspect is obvious, but season one of Vice Principals rarely went where we expected.

Below, watch the Vice Principals season 2 trailer.

The second season of Vice Principals is also its last. “The whole series is only 18 episodes and that’s it,” McBride explained to Variety. “We just wanted to make a really long movie. It’s one school year and a complete story. This was an old screenplay that Jody [Hill] and I wrote back in 2006. But we needed it to be longer so we added and reworked it and broke it up into 18 segments.” All 18 episodes were shot at once, so the reaction to season 1 didn’t influence season 2 at all. It’s pure McBride and Hill.

The critical reaction was mostly positive but a little mixed, which is not surprising considering the show’s humor – quite cruel and (hilariously) unpleasant at times – isn’t for everybody. It’s mostly about not very good people doing very bad things, but some of them, like Gamby, strive to do better, even if they have no clue how. As they did with Kenny Powers, Hill, McBride, and regular director David Gordon Green once again show a lot of love and empathy for their self-destructive protagonists.

Few lessons seemed to have been learned following season one. Lee Russell (Walton Goggins) is the same Lee we met in season one. He seems like the one who would shoot Gamby, but there are other characters on the show who probably have plenty against Gamby. Maybe not enough motivation to kill him, but he did help possibly destroy Dr. Belinda Brown’s (Kimberly Herbert Gregory) career. Gamby doesn’t have a lot of friends on this show. The only person he can count on to always have his back, though? His ex-wife’s (Busy Phillips) fantastic, supportive-of-everyone husband, Ray Liptrapp (Shea Whigham). It’s great to see him back along with the rest of the Vice Principals characters. As horrifying as they can be – well, mostly just Gamby and Russell – they’re always watchable.